


Arr: Liverpool Lime Street, 1822

by redandgold



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Fluff, Humour, M/M, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 20:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10726950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: Gary takes a train. Only there's someone in his seat.





	Arr: Liverpool Lime Street, 1822

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesecretdetectivecollection](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/gifts).



> _Prompt description: you were sat in my reserved train seat and refused to move so i sat on your lap and now we’re both too annoyed and awkwardly turned on to move_  
>  Optional details: Inspired by that one time Gary was too good for this world where he sat on the floor after giving up his seat to an old guy. if carra had been there he'd just have sat in his lap, let's be real __
> 
> _  
> _I hope you like this, giftee <3_  
>  _

TICKET TYPE: ADVANCE SINGLE  
ADULT: ONE     CHILD: NIL  
FROM: LONDON EUSTON  
TO: LIVERPOOL LIME STREET  
VALID AT: 1555 HOURS  
PRICE: £16  
SEAT: B10  
MANDATORY RESERVATION COUPON 1 OF 1

 

 

"What. The. Fuck." 

Gary has his train tickets in one hand, his sense of indignant self-righteousness in the other, and both are curled into fists that might have encouraged fear of a violent altercation had the ostensible perpetrator not been so pasty. The man who is the object of his attention smiles politely, if slightly patronisingly, and Gary's face (already red as red can be, and considering it is Gary Neville we are talking about - the man who threw a tantrum because county court told him he couldn't ban Scousers from entering his hotel - this was saying something) grows redder. Never in the field of human conflict has so much fury been directed at so craggy a person in so few words. 

"This is my seat." Gary jabs his finger towards the B10 clearly printed on his ticket and then uses said finger to invade the man's personal space, landing squarely on his chest (it surprises him in the smallest tiniest amount at how... firm... it is, but Gary steadfastly ejects that thought from his brain). "Not yours. Mine. See the ticket? My seat." 

"How many times can you say the word 'my' in a minute?" the man says with an air of offhanded interest you would usually associate with episodes of  _ Come Dine With Me  _ when someone's not happy and there's a bust-up. Gary recoils the moment he speaks, as if his worst fears have been realised. While it isn't quite Liverpool winning the title (just having to write that down as his worst fear makes Gary feel the urge to hug the Trinity in his United boxers) it is painfully close. 

"You're one of  _ them _ ," he manages, as if Scousers have morphed into some sort of evil dystopian robot who looks normal enough on the outside but will melt your mouth if pressed.

"Unfortunately." The Scouser's grin is far too smug for Gary's liking, i.e. he would sooner have to suffer through Phil's latest attempts to prove that he can cook than see that again. "That is usually what happens when you get on a train going towards Liverpool..." his eyes float to Gary's suitcase, which has his name printed all over in the block letters of either someone extremely paranoid or a twelve-year-old. Which Gary is is still up for debate. "...Gary." 

Gary can feel his mood taking a nosedive more massive than Arsenal's league position around the start of each year. The way the Scouser had said his name was condescendingly pitying, as if he knew that it was on the endangered names list (a fact that there was, really, not just no point in knowing, but was somehow even more embarrassing if you did). 

"This is fucking ridiculous," he mutters. 'Mutters' is, of course, a subjective term; most people would have described it as unearthly screeching. "I paid for this seat! Specifically this seat! I want this seat!" 

By now people are starting to stare at them. This would have put an ordinary person off, especially given the fact that there are various other seats in the coach that have no Scouse arses stuck to their surfaces, but Gary Neville is not an ordinary person. Gary Neville is an indefatigable Pomeranian who invented the phrase 'never knowing when to shut up'. 

The Scouser, perhaps sensing this, offers a compromise. "The seat next to me is empty," he gestures, the infuriating smile still permanently fixed onto his face. Gary would be lying if he said he hasn't fantasised a thousand and one ways in which the smile very quickly comes off. "I'd be happy for you to sit next to me,  _ Gary _ , if you don't mind sitting next to a Liverpool fan." 

Gary's eyes narrow like a hunter zooming in on its prey, or like him within two hundred yards of a decent chippie. (There is a reason why he isn't allowed into the cafe of his own hotel, and it has nothing to do with nepotism.) "No thanks. All that losing might rub off on me. Imagine not winning the league for 25 y -  _ oh. _ " 

The  _ oh  _ is both an attack and an invitation, maneuvered with a calculativeness of a man who would put down '20 years of Scouse-baiting' as experience on his CV if only Scholesy would let him. The Scouser bristles with indignation and Gary grins. Hook, line, and bloody sinker. 

"Yeah, well, at least we can't defend a title as woefully as Moyes. What was that league position of yours again?"

"7th, so equal to or higher than you for three of the last five seasons. And they say Everton's the midtable club, eh?" 

"Everton haven't won five European cups. Come to think of it, neither have you." 

"And which one of us has won a European cup in the last ten years?" 

"The team we comprehensively beat on our way to the final of a competition you haven't won? The team that lost 4-0 to MK Dons? The team that - "

Gary is left with no choice but Drastic Measures. He huffs, eyeballs the Scouser, and promptly sits in his lap.

The Scouser chokes on whatever he was going to say next with surprise. This would ordinarily have satisfied Gary to no end, except he is busy coming to regret the folly of a protest that involved sandwiching his pasty-filled self between a man and a very close table. 

"I am not moving," he says succinctly, "until you fuck off." 

The succinctness is more from Gary trying to catch his breath than anything else. He's pretty sure that his lungs are being slowly compressed and that he's going to die here just because some Liverpudlian idiot was too stubborn to get out.

"I can take it if you can," the Scouser replies, tart and totally not the response Gary was hoping to hear. Normal people would have been freaked out enough to get the hell out of the chair, but apparently this bloke is not a normal person, either.

"Fine." 

" _ Fine. _ " 

They sit like that for nigh on half an hour, not saying a word to each other. The conductor who has to mark off Gary's ticket stares at them like he's torn between wanting to ask and never, ever wanting to know.

"I'm Jamie," the Scouser finally says, which is a bit of a relief, because Gary has gotten a little sick of having to rhyme 'Scouser' with other words in the bitter limericks he's composing in his head to send to Scholesy later. 

"I would say it's nice to meet you," Gary snipes, "except I would rather meet Luis Suarez in a dark alley with a sign that says 'bite me' around my neck."

"Would you really?" Jamie sounds amused. Gary wouldn't actually know what he looks like because to do so would be to turn around and be in uncomfortably close proximity to the other man's face, and the implications of such an action are not something he is willing to confront at this point of their relationship.  

Which is  _ not  _ a relationship, he reminds himself sternly. A relationship requires mutual feelings and there is nothing feeling-y about this, only banter. No matter how annoyingly attractive the other person's arms are. 

Gary thinks he's going to be sick.

"Yes," he snaps. Jamie laughs.

"It's cute how determined not to admit things you are." 

Gary splutters with the affront of a WengerOut fan confronted with a new contract, if such affront looked like a tomato and sounded like a chicken. "I am  _ not  _ cute." 

"Uh huh." Jamie pats him on the head. Jamie  _ actually pats him on the head.  _ Gary has to seriously consider the pros and cons of spending the rest of his life in jail before deciding against turning around and strangling the man.

"How  _ dare  _ you - "

"So what is it you do?" Jamie sidesteps the issue with the consummate experience of an old pro, to the point that Gary thinks this must not be the first time a stranger has sat on his lap. Of course he'd be that sort of fellow. He probably goes around goading people on trains until they fall in love with his clever banter and stupidly attractive arms and go make out with him in the toilet. It's not the sort of thing Gary does and he takes comfort in his temporary moral high ground, thoroughly ignoring the fact that he is inching ever closer to acknowledging that Jamie's lap is, in fact, quite comfortable.

"I'm a hotelier," he says instead, with the smugness of someone who's expecting his conversation partner not to understand words more than two syllables long. "We're very classy. It isn't something you'd be familiar with. Kind of like winning the league, in that respect." 

"I can be classy when I want to,  _ Gary. _ " The almost-natural condescension attached to his name as it comes from Jamie's mouth has returned, and Gary finds that he actually quite likes the way Jamie says it. In a strictly objective manner of speaking, of course. It is an excellent, objective example of how English disdain can filter even through proper nouns. Objectively speaking. 

"Please. You wouldn't know class unless it has the word 'second' stuck in front of it." 

"I'm a chef, actually." Jamie's voice is laced with a cocktail of equal parts annoyance and triumph. "At a Michelin Star restaurant. So there." 

"Oh." This is terrible for many reasons: firstly, Gary looks a right idiot now; secondly, the overplaying of his hand has put him on the defensive and given Jamie the moral ground; thirdly and most importantly, he's just passed up a chance to get free food from a Michelin Star restaurant. 

"Bet you're thinking about all the free food you just missed out on," Jamie smirks and prods a finger in Gary's (unfortunately obvious) belly, demonstrating his total lack of regard for concepts such as personal space. 

"Um, excuse me. Speak for yourself." This is not the best comeback that Gary could have thought of, especially given how fit he knows Jamie is (unfortunately obvious). Especially given how Jamie knows how fit Gary thinks he is. 

"I'm a fucking Greek god, you tosspot." 

"Sleep around with every girl you find and give birth to kids from your limbs?" 

"Chiselled abs and gay as fuck." 

_ Oh.  _ Gary's glad that he's facing the other way so that Jamie can't see how pink he's just turned, to the point that, if he asked for the role, the titular panther would have had to concede it. 

"You're getting turned on by this, aren't you?" Jamie says cheerfully. 

Gary chokes on the crisp he's just put into his mouth. " _ What? _ " he squawks, after having a bit of a coughing fit during which Jamie puts his hand on his back pretending to be all concerned. (Gary doesn't trust that at all. It's  _ his  _ fault this happened in the first place, the bastard. This is nothing more than a marketing opportunity for Nice Guy Jamie to fuck around with Gary's brain even more than he already has.) 

"I said," Jamie repeats slowly, as if repeating it in any way makes what was actually said better. "You're getting turned on by this, aren't you?" 

"I have never heard such ridiculousness in my life," Gary says promptly. "And I was there when Moyes said we were going to aspire to be like City." 

Jamie changes tack. "Would you mind getting off me, then? I only like being sat on when it's part of kinky foreplay." 

Gary has never, ever met someone more full of bullshit in his life, and considering he knows both Ryan and Butty, this is serious indeed. "YOU'RE IN MY SEAT," he screeches for the last time, his voice reaching decibels hitherto unknown to the human race. Whoever hasn't already been staring at them for the past hour now joins the voyeurism (a word with unfortunate implications but the only one Gary can think of right now, which says everything about his state of mind). 

Jamie shifts his weight and Gary has to bite his lip in order not to let out a sound that would have made the situation even more compromising than it already was. "All right. You win. Would you fucking stand up so that I can move?" 

Gary blinks. "Really?" Whatever he'd been expecting, it certainly wasn't for Jamie to give up this easily (not that lasting for this long is 'easy' for most people, but he's always had an interpretation of 'easy' that Phil continually insists he shouldn't apply to others.) "You're just going to ... let me win?" 

"If it's that bloody important to you," Jamie sighs. Gary can literally hear the calculated ploy of good sportsmanship in his tone. "Just stop bothering me, yeah?" 

Gary gets up and Jamie slides over to the seat next to them, and then takes out a book and stares pointedly at it, not uttering another word.  _ This is emotional blackmail, _ Gaz texts Scholesy, who comes back with  _ if you ever involve me in your pointless love life again I will eat all of the ice cream in your fridge _ . 

"Um." It's all far too much to bear and Gary clears his throat after twenty minutes. "What're you reading?" 

Jamie drops him a withering glare. This is play acting on the level of Diego Costa - petty, childish, and entirely without reason - and the only thing that annoys Gary more than Jamie at the moment is that he can actually feel himself being taken in by it. 

Not one to be deterred by Scouse mind games (and that was in the entirely hypothetical event that they existed) Gary tries again. "Must be interesting."

"I told you to stop bothering me," Jamie scowls.

"Yeah, but you didn't mean it, did you?" Gary almost whines about it and would not be averse to obliging if someone asked him to punch himself in the face. "I mean, it was just banter."

"Was that all I was to you?" How Jamie is doing this ridiculous thing of feigning hurt and making Gary feel bad Gary will never know. He's known the guy barely two hours, for fuck's sake. That's barely enough time to get Steven Gerrard sent off 150 times.

Evidently he must have said that out loud, because Jamie's scowl deepens even further and he purposely crams his nose into his book. All tantrums, however, have a silver lining, and this one comes with cramming far too hard and somehow giving himself a papercut on his face. 

"Jesus fucking Christ," he yelps, and Gary almost jumps out of his seat. 

"Are you - " he isn't sure whether to laugh or be scared, ends up trying to do both, and consequently makes a very bad impression. "- are you okay?"

"Do I fucking look okay?" Jamie swears. 

"Who the fuck papercuts themselves in the fucking face?" Gary snorts, but he roots around in his pockets for tissues nevertheless and presses them unceremoniously against Jamie's face.

There's a split second where his fingers are 3-ply (because he's Gary Neville, fastiduous in everything he does, and 2-ply would never hack it) away from Jamie's skin and both of them realise that at the same time and their eyes flick to each other and then the split second is gone.

"Um." Jamie coughs. "Thanks. I should go clean this up." 

"Uh huh." Gary swallows. "That would be a good idea.

"I need to get past you, idiot," Jamie says gently. Gary realises he's sitting in the aisle and shifts awkwardly so that Jamie can slide past him. There's another split second where his knees brush the back of Jamie's legs and Gary stiffens and thinks he feels Jamie stiffen as well and he wonders whether he should do anything drastic like follow him to the bathroom and then that split second is also gone.

Gary is getting very tired of split seconds.

Jamie comes back from the bathroom without further incident and picks up his book again, only to put it down and tilt it so that Gary can see the cover. Gary blanches.

" _ Red or Dead _ . Really." 

"It is an inspiration." Jamie glares at him like he's just insulted his favourite book he's ever read. To be fair, it might also be the only book. (Stop that, he tells himself sternly. Scousers are people too.) "It absoutely gets to the meaning of the club. The repetition is genius." 

"Well, I'm glad something's repeating for you lot, even if it's not going to be your title wins." 

"You keep talking, sixth place." 

"And _that's_ equal to or higher than four of your last five seasons." 

Jamie breaks into a broad grin. 

"I like you, Neville. You're not so bad for a Manc." 

"Oh, bollocks." Now Jamie's going to expect him to say something equally nice and Gary's brain has not yet rewired itself to put the word 'Scouser' with anything that had good connotations. Finally he grinds out a 'you're actually alright' and attempts to reinforce his feeble concession with a smile that is not altogether convincing.

Jamie, however, seems to take this to heart. "Actually alright," he muses. "From an emotionally repressed Manc that's almost an I-love-you. I could live with that." 

"How d'you know I'm emotionally repressed?" was not what Gary had meant to ask, but it fell out of him anyway. Fan-bloody-tastic. Now Jamie is going to think that he had the emotional capacity of a potato, and while this is not far from the truth, it is also not the kind of impression you want to give someone with nice arms. 

"I've just spent the last three hours flirting with you and you've not responded in any way, shape, or form, which means either you're as straight as Bayern Munich's path to the Bundesliga title, or you're emotionally repressed." 

Gary's face has turned so red that United wouldn't be remiss if they were to use it as next season's kit.

"Oh."

"I'm gonna guess it's not the former." 

"No." 

"Wanna know why I let you win?" 

"Why?" 

"Because it was cute how determined you were." Jamie shoots him a dirty leer that must have been outlawed in at least thirty seven countries. "And because I didn't want you feeling my bon-"

"For the love of God do not complete that sentence," Gary cuts across, this close to throwing himself out of the window. Jamie looks completely self-satisfied, the smug prick. Gary has a good mind to throw  _ him  _ out of the window as well. 

"Told ya. Y'know what you need, Manc? You need to get it out of your system. Meet a stranger on the train, make out with him in the toilet, and be done with it." 

"Would this hypothetical stranger - " Gary bites his lip and thinks  _ I am so going to hell  _ as well as  _ Scholesy is going to personally send me to hell  _ \- "also be amenable to dinner afterwards?" 

"Not if you call it 'amenable to dinner' instead of 'going for a pint', Jesus," Jamie groans. "The fuck are you from, Downton Abbey?" 

"Oi, just because I have more class than you - " 

"Michelin star, remember? I'm as class as anyone - " 

"All right, so you can cook later - " 

"Are you asking me out on a  _ date _ , Neville?" 

Gary bites his lip, closes his eyes, and begs for forgiveness from the Sir Alex Ferguson portrait that currently holds pride of place above his telly. "Unfortunately." 

Jamie is genuinely delighted.

"There you go. I always knew you could overcome the ruler stuck up your arse." 

"I do  _ not  _ have a ruler stuck up my arse." 

"Mm. I'll have to check that for myself sometime." 

Gary nearly chokes to death right there and then. He is absolutely convinced that Jamie is just doing this to get a rise out of him (and no need to go into the dirty implications of this phrase, either). It is slightly more worrying that he is succeeding. "Fucking hell, James, do you have any sense of self-respect?" 

"None whatsoever." Jamie smiles brightly at him. "Which is why I'm now going to the toilet. But not to fix a papercut on my face, you understand."

He slides past Gary again, this time leaning back ever-so-slightly-on-purpose so that the touch of their legs is unmistakable and lasts much, much longer than a split second. Gary watches him disappear out of the carriage and constructs a mental image of a small angry ginger flicking water at him and calling for repentance. But he's tired of split seconds, and not taking chances reminds him far too much of United this season. He would very much not like to come in sixth.

Gary stands up and eases himself out of B10, laughing at the fact that the seat they fought over is going to be empty for a while.

 

Two weeks later a Virgin Trains customer service officer runs into headquarters screaming and clutching a piece of paper. "We just got our first fan mail!" he yells, mad with the delirium of any customer service officer who'd ever gotten fanmail, ever (a preciously small sampling). "Mr. Neville and Mr. Carragher thank us for the smashing ride that they had. It was good fucking." 

"Now, see, Jack, this is what happens when you don't study English properly," the elderly manager looks up and peers over his glasses with owlish disapproval. "It's supposed to be 'fucking good'."  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Price and timings are based on my own trip to liverpool lmao  
> 1822 is A HIDDEN JOKE bc they're scholesy's shirt numbers hahhahaha *involves him in everything*  
> I tried to find a way of making 'come in sixth' a dirty joke but spelling it out all 'btw they're in carriage six' would have stepped all over it so....there u go  
> Jack is the name of their MNF technician I think?
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


End file.
